Friday, 14 August 2015

A Lost Child at Peterloo

As
the anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre approaches, it is a pleasure to
welcome Chris Pearce to the salon. Chris is the author of A Weaver’s Web and
has kindly agreed to share his research into Peterloo with us.

Manchester’s
Peterloo Massacre on 16 August 1819 is remembered each year with the Peterloo
Picnic. My interest in Manchester and the early labour movement started in the
1990s when I researched and wrote a non-fiction book on an Australian convict, Through
the Eyes of Thomas Pamphlett: Convict and Castaway. He grew up in
Manchester and became a brickmaker before being transported for 14 years for
horse stealing.

The
book’s first chapter, ‘A Wretched Upbringing’, is all about early industrial
Manchester. With all the factories and terrace housing going up, there was a
huge demand for bricks although brickmaking was a seasonal occupation and
Pamphlett struggled to survive in the cold winter months. I did a lot of
research into the dreadful living and working conditions in the rapidly growing
city and how the cotton barons seemed to build mills wherever they wanted,
polluting the air and waterways, and treating employees with complete disdain.

This
encouraged me to write a novel, A Weaver’s Web, set in the
Manchester area in the early 19th century. Handloom weaver
Henry Wakefield, wife Sarah and their five children lived in Middleton and
suffered greatly from the shift in work from cottage-based industries to the
new, more efficient factories, which he hated. He supported the Establishment
but this was to steadily change as he became ever poorer and due to incidents
such as when the family was asked to leave church because a son had dirty hands
from digging up potatoes for breakfast and also when he heard a stirring speech
by reformer Samuel Bamford at a Hampden Club meeting (a real meeting) at the
local chapel just before Christmas 1816.

A
new factory was to be built on the site of the Wakefields’ rented cottage and
the family moved to Manchester. There they were even worse off, living in a
dingy cellar that flooded when it rained. Henry finally relented and let family
members work in factories. The reform movement waxed and waned and Henry was
usually too busy earning his pittance to attend meetings. Sarah went to her
first strike meeting with other workers from her factory and this encouraged
Henry.

It
was 1819 and the reform meetings got larger and noisier, much to the alarm of
the magistrates. There were huge meetings in other large cities and reform was
the main topic of conversation in Manchester streets and homes. The biggest
meeting of all was to be held at St Peter’s Field on August 16 and Henry spent
the previous day at his union society making banners.

The
meeting was a family occasion and the Wakefields set off on foot along with
many thousands of other residents and thousands from out of town. Henry saw
Bamford leading a large contingent from Middleton and he hoped the meeting
would help bring about better political representation for Manchester and
northern England. He tried to explain the meaning of some of the banners to
Sarah, who didn’t read, and the children.

The
magistrates became increasingly worried as they watched the crowd build up from
a window overlooking the field to probably the largest the world had ever seen.
You can see the magistrates leaning out the window at the left side of the
picture on the cover of the novel. Speaker Henry Hunt made his way through the
crowd to roars of approval. This scared the magistrates even more and they
watched his every move, believing that revolution would break out at any time.
Finally, they couldn’t contain themselves any longer and ordered the cavalry to
move in and arrest Hunt. The crowd was so large there wasn’t room to let them
through and the soldiers lashed out with their swords.

Henry
and Sarah Wakefield grabbed their children’s hands as the scene became more
chaotic. I describe it in the novel: “Henry was knocked to the ground trying to
protect Sarah and the children as a horse rode over the top of them. He got up
holding his shoulder, only to be knocked down again. People stumbled over him
trying to get away. He thought he could hear Sarah screaming ‘Catherine’ [their
daughter] several times, but he couldn’t see either of them. As he crawled
along looking for them, his face covered in blood and dirt, he saw people
staggering and limping, some supported by their families and friends. And he
saw other folk lying motionless as frantic loved ones tried to help them. He
got to his feet but everything spun. He tripped over belongings left behind and
over a number of people crawling about. He went with the general flow of those
nearby, calling out: ‘Have you seen my family,’ but they didn’t know him or
where his family might be.”

He
eventually got home to find his family next door being looked after by the
elderly neighbour, but without youngest daughter Catherine. She finally got
home in the evening with one of the special constables employed on the day who
had found her wandering the streets dazed. He had taken her to his place where
his wife bathed and fed her before he took her back to her home.

Peterloo
put reform on hold for quite a while. Reform leaders and journalists of the
radical press were arrested and jailed and the Manchester Observer closed.
The plight of the Wakefields and thousands of other Manchester families became
even worse. It would be another 13 years before Manchester got parliamentary
representation. Meanwhile, Henry was desperate so he started his own factory
and after various setbacks made a lot of money. But this brought with it a
whole new set of problems for the Wakefields.

I
am currently researching and writing a history of daylight saving time around
the world which I intend publishing as an ebook next year. After this, I plan
to write a script based on A Weaver’s Web and hope to find a
literary agent or producer to make it into a TV series or film. It might
complement Mike Leigh’s planned film, Peterloo.

Chris
Pearce was born in Surrey, UK, and grew up in Melbourne, Australia. He has
qualifications in economics, management/marketing and writing/editing. He
worked as a public servant (federal and state) for 25 years and in the
commercial world for 12.5 years.

He
has written and published a historical novel set in early 19th century
Manchester, UK. The story follows the Wakefield family through poverty and
wealth. Chris also has a non-fiction book on an Australian convict,Through
the Eyes of Thomas Pamphlett: Convict and Castaway. He is currently writing
a book on the history of daylight saving time around the world.